PowerShell brought over many of the essential Bash file system commands and behaviors. While several of the Bash commands are available in PowerShell, they are incompatible with Windows and were brought over as aliases.
An alias is like a nickname for a command. Some Bash commands, such as pwd or cd, are aliases for underlying PowerShell cmdlets, such Get-Location and Set-Location.
Because these aliases are not the real Bash command, not all of their parameters are the same in PowerShell. Let’s explore the underlying cmdlets and the common arguments used with them.
Note
Some of the navigation shorthands are different from in the Bash environment:
~: shorthand for the home directory still works-: shorthand for returning to the previous working directory does notThe this directory and up directory characters are the same, but use the Windows path separator of a back-slash (\):
.: this directory shorthand.\: relative to this directory shorthand..\: up directory level shorthandIn PowerShell, you can either use the Bash alias:
> pwd
# C:\Users\<username>
or its underlying cmdlet, Get-Location:
> Get-Location
# C:\Users\<username>
The Bash command cd can still be used with an absolute or relative path:
> cd relative/path
> cd C:\absolute\path
It is an alias for the PowerShell cmdlet Set-Location, which uses the same arguments:
> Set-Location relative/path
> Set-Location C:\absolute\path
In Bash, we used the ls command with or without a path to list the contents of a directory:
> ls
# contents of CWD
> ls relative\path
# contents of dir at relative path to CWD
> ls C:\absolute\path
# contents of dir from absolute path
The Get-ChildItem cmdlet also uses an absolute or relative path of a directory to list directory contents:
> Get-ChildItem
# contents of CWD
> Get-ChildItem -Path relative\path
# contents of dir at relative path to CWD
> Get-ChildItem -Path C:\absolute\path
# contents of dir from absolute path
The mv command can be used in Bash or PowerShell with an absolute or relative path for either of its arguments:
> mv path\to\target C:\absolute\path\to\destination
The PowerShell cmdlet behind mv is the more declaratively named Move-Item:
> Move-Item path\to\target C:\absolute\path\to\destination
In PowerShell, copying an item can be done using the Bash command cp. Recall that we used the -r (recursive) option when copying a directory with its contents. For a file, however, we could just use cp directly:
# copy a directory recursively
> cp -r path\to\target path\to\destination
# copy a file
> cp path\to\target\file path\to\destination\file
Its cmdlet equivalent, Copy-Item, can also be used for files or directories. When copying a directory, the -Recurse option can be used like the Bash option -r:
# copy a directory recursively
> Copy-Item -Recurse path\to\target path\to\destination
# copy a file
> Copy-Item path\to\target\file path\to\destination\file
Warning
Be very careful when removing (deleting) items in PowerShell. Always use the interactive mode (-Confirm option) to confirm each deletion!
Previously, we used the Bash rm command with the -i (interactive) option to remove files and directories. Just like cp, we added the -r (recursive) option when deleting a directory and its contents.
However, in PowerShell these options can not be used. Instead we will use the PowerShell Remove-Item cmdlet with the following options:
-Confirm: confirm each item before being deleted (like -i interactive mode in Bash)-Recurse: when removing a directory and its contents recursively# delete a directory and contents recursively
> Remove-Item -Confirm -Recurse path\to\dir-name
# delete a file item
> Remove-Item -Confirm path\to\file-name.ext
In Bash, we used the mkdir command to create new directories. This alias is still available in PowerShell, but its underlying cmdlet is much more powerful:
> mkdir relative\path
> mkdir C:\absolute\path
Recall that in Bash we used a side-effect of the touch command to create a new file. The touch alias does not exist in PowerShell.
Instead of using a side-effect, PowerShell has a dedicated cmdlet for creating items of any type, such as a file or directory.
The New-Item cmdlet has the following options:
-Name "<item name>": the name of the item to create-Path <path of new item>: will create the item (of the given Name) at the absolute or relative path-ItemType "<file type>": will create the item with a specific type (like file or directory)For example, to create a directory:
> New-Item -Name "dir-name" -ItemType "directory" -Path relative\path
# creates relative\path\dir-name directory Item
> New-Item -Name "dir-name" -ItemType "directory" -Path C:\absolute\path
# creates C:\absolute\path\dir-name directory Item
When creating a file, you can use the -Value option to write content to the file in one command. Remember that extensions matter in Windows. You must provide the file extension in the -Name option:
> New-Item -Name "my-file.txt" -ItemType "file" -Path relative\path -Value "contents of the file"
# creates relative\path\my-file.txt with "contents of the file" written to it
> New-Item -Name "my-file.txt" -ItemType "file" -Path C:\absolute\path -Value "contents of the file"
# creates C:\absolute\path\my-file.txt with "contents of the file" written to it
Tip
For creating the contents of files that are more than a single line, take a look at this here-string tutorial article.
In Bash, we learned about the cat (concatenate) command. We used the side-effect of cat to print the contents of a file to the Terminal. We can use cat in PowerShell as well:
> cat relative\path\to\file
> cat C:\absolute\path\to\file
The PowerShell equivalent to cat is Get-Content. Notice how declarative the naming is—you are getting the contents of the file:
> Get-Content relative\path
# contents of file at relative path to CWD
> Get-Content C:\absolute\path
# contents of file from absolute path
The Get-Content cmdlet will output an object based on the content in the file. Most of the time, this will be a single String object for each line in the file.
Note
The Get-Content cmdlet has a number of options that can be used to get certain lines of a file’s contents, or even filter the output. You can read more about the options in this documentation article